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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253558">Must Be Strangely Exciting to Watch the Stoic Squirm</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn'>MayGlenn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Maeglin's RIP Roswell 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Android!Alex, Androids, Angst, F/M, Jesse Manes is a War Crime, Look the boy is a certified mess, M/M, Multi, and my feelings about tyler are complicated these days so this was me processing that, endgame Malexa but honestly not that shippy, my feelings about season 2 alex are also complicated let's be real</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:40:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>6,566</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253558</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayGlenn/pseuds/MayGlenn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Master Sergeant Jesse Manes raised three sons and built one android.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alex Manes &amp; Jesse Manes, Maria DeLuca &amp; Alex Manes, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin/Alex Manes, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Maeglin's RIP Roswell 2020 [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985932</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RIP Roswell 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For <a href="https://riproswell.tumblr.com/post/627177290151903232/rest-in-peace-roswell-a-halloween-rnm-event">RIP Roswell</a>, October 30th - Enter Sandman<br/>prompt: sleep with one eye open…<br/>themes: dreams/nightmares, magic, psychics, and alternative realities</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Master Sergeant Jesse Manes raised three sons and built one android. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He constructed the artificial intelligence himself, so the machine was practically his son. He had a birth certificate forged for the A.I.-ex unit, calling it “Alex” so no one suspected he wasn’t a real boy. Jesse would trade out parts while the android child powered down at night, whenever growth spurts seemed appropriate, and no one, not his brothers, not even A.I.-ex himself, knew what he was. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Mindy knew, of course, and her parting gift to her not-son was a corruptive artificial intelligence program with the knowledge of good and evil, that could learn to question, to think for itself, to feel, and to disobey. It was as cruel a gift as it was kind, because in some sense she granted A.I.-ex a soul, and by giving him a soul she left him in hell. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Kissing Maria DeLuca in Haley Moore’s closet was when Alex first realized he was different, though at the time he just thought he had discovered he was gay, not—a gay </span>
  <em>
    <span>robot</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was also the first time his A.I. understood love and safety as concrete concepts, the first time he realized something was wrong with his father and his family and how he had grown up. So he was grateful for that kiss, his awakening, the day the Tin Man first felt his heart beat. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tag to 1x6: Smells Like Teen Spirit</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Alex would later learn that he keyed in to Michael Guerin (and, he would learn even later, Maria DeLuca) because his father had designed him to be an alien-hunting machine. He could smell them, actually, like some kind of bioplastic bloodhound. But what his father designed to be used for tracking, his mother’s creative A.I. registered as...</span>
  <em>
    <span>interest</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Having sex with Michael Guerin set off several alarms, but these just registered as nerves, as infatuation, as desire bordering on obsession. The part of his programming that knew he was an alien hunter couldn’t be happier that the alien had </span>
  <em>
    <span>come to him</span>
  </em>
  <span>, had sought him out, had kissed him. Alex’s program might actually have imprinted. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then his father entered the wood shed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex thought he froze up out of fear, but of course it was his programming warring inside him: the first rule that he never disobey his father against this newfound love—whatever love was, to an android—for Michael. And he failed to protect Michael, couldn’t do anything but lock up like a damn deer in headlights, and Alex never forgave himself for that as long as he functioned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After, Jesse sat down across from Alex, who still hadn’t moved, still couldn’t move, shaking, </span>
  <em>
    <span>glitching</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You want to know why I hurt that boy and not you, Alex?” Jesse asked. “Because if I hurt you, you won’t feel it. I didn’t bother installing pain receptors. That would make you less efficient. Less efficient at hunting and killing the extraterrestrial invasion bent on our destruction.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex’s rogue A.I. filled in the blanks, here. His programming, now he knew it was there, analyzed the data and concluded that Michael must be one of these aliens. Alex immediately calculated that Jesse didn’t know or guess this yet, however, and Alex was not about to let him find out. He tried deleting Michael Guerin from his memory banks entirely, but wasn’t quite sure how, or else somehow the files had made themselves permanent in his processors. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Deleting </span>
  <em>
    <span>calculus </span>
  </em>
  <span>worked just fine, when he tried that. Ugh.) </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then Jesse knelt in front of Alex, who still couldn’t move, and detached his right leg below the knee, showing him the circuits inside him that were hidden by a very clever synthetic flesh that only seemed real. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex might have laughed at that, if he could move. It certainly explained some things about him. But he couldn’t laugh or cry, or scream or attack, he could only watch as Jesse fitted him, as punishment, with a new leg, this one without synthetic skin or anything that looked or felt real, as a reminder. He destroyed the old leg in the wood chipper and made Alex watch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Jesse was right. It didn’t hurt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not like being shipped out to Basic the very next day hurt, without even knowing whether Michael was okay, and hearing, only much later when he used his first phone call six weeks in to call Maria, that Rosa was dead. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>That </span>
  </em>
  <span>hurt. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Some robot he was. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It was very apparent when Alex came back to Roswell that trying to delete his memories of Michael Guerin was useless, because Alex was just as interested, just as obsessed, just as desperate to be with him as he was before he shipped out, and still had no fucking clue how to do so like anything remotely resembling a human being. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex was doing this all wrong, he knew he was doing this wrong, and still Michael let him. Still Michael seemed even to love him, too. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m an android engineered to hunt down and exterminate aliens,” he confessed to Michael, once, when the guilt from looking at his mangled, scarred hand became too much to bear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Being stoic and having a prosthetic leg doesn’t make you an android, Alex,” Michael laughed.  “At best it makes you, like, bionic. And if I see any little green men I’ll let you know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex didn’t have the courage to correct him. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Chapter 5</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tag to 2x1: Stay (I Missed You)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Alex finally succeeded in driving Michael away from him entirely, not by being an android engineered to hunt down and exterminate aliens, but by trying to be helpful, in the end. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Information on his mother, Nora Truman, after the deaths at Caulfield. Whatever Alex was designed to do, his father had never brought him in on this, and when he learned about it his motherboard simply couldn’t fathom the extent of the cruelty there, and its tragic destruction. His mother’s A.I. shut down and needed to reboot whenever he tried to think about it like a human. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So, information, he thought. He liked information. Michael liked information. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex handed the intake papers to Michael in a red folder, but Michael took one look at them and practically threw him back in his face. A miscalculation, obviously. His A.I. letting him down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You push me away and you pull me back in, and I go where you want me. I don’t want that anymore.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex...wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>hurt</span>
  </em>
  <span>. His A.I. was too buggy to register any kind of pain these days. But he was blindsided. He reviewed past interactions with Michael colored by this new filter of information. Perhaps—obviously—what Alex had coded as </span>
  <em>
    <span>maintaining appropriate distance from Michael to ensure his safety</span>
  </em>
  <span> registered as a rejection to Michael, as rejection after rejection, really, and these had affected Michael more profoundly than Alex had ever realized. He wasn’t great at reading emotions, after all, he never had been, even before Caulfield put his A.I. on the fritz. His best and really only friend was an empath for that reason. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Michael ran straight into Maria’s arms, so Alex couldn’t really even talk to her about it.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>This was fine. This was good, even. The two people his useless programming registered as his highest priorities, together. It significantly reduced the processing power it took to keep them both safe and happy if they were in physically the same place more often and made each other happy. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Chapter 6</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Alex played music. Music was emotions written in math. He understood music. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Chapter 7</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tag to 2x6: Sex and Candy</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“This is gonna sting,” Michael said. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Alex replied, though he didn’t actually feel anything. He hissed on instinct, a mimicry of the memory of pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I really don’t want to leave,” Alex said, because one feeling he </span>
  <em>
    <span>did </span>
  </em>
  <span>register was safety: knowing that Maria and Michael were safe after that psycho nearly killed them. He clung to that, wanted to keep experiencing the sensation. Michael and Maria were here, were together, were safe, and he just wanted to slip into low power mode knowing he could give that priority a rest, give some lower priorities some processing power back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Maria kissed him, his A.I. came back online. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sucked in a breath, chasing that kiss, that sensation, because gay or not, robot or not, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>felt</span>
  </em>
  <span> something, felt with a depth he hadn’t felt in months. His chest hurt. His heart and head hurt, and it was kind of glorious just to feel. He loved them, God, </span>
  <em>
    <span>he loved them both</span>
  </em>
  <span>. And he knew he was loved in turn, and that was so much worse. Alex almost started crying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But was he going to leave? Hell, no. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What are we doing?” Michael asked. Alex didn’t have a fucking clue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay,” Maria said, and Alex trusted her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex had never felt </span>
  <em>
    <span>loved </span>
  </em>
  <span>like that with just Guerin, because what they had may have been deep and cosmic and profound, but it was missing all the foundational minutiae of a human relationship. All that stuff Alex and Michael both didn’t know because they weren’t human and hadn’t been taught it. The sex with Michael had always been good, sure, but he and Michael were effectively strangers. It was math without melody, beautiful in its own way, but just notes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The difference was Maria </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>him and </span>
  <em>
    <span>still </span>
  </em>
  <span>loved him. That was a symphony. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And, Alex was pretty sure, she had figured out he was an android. Maybe their kiss had sparked, literally, or it might have been a psychic thing, but either way, she knew. She </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew him</span>
  </em>
  <span> and she didn’t say anything. Perhaps she didn’t want to say anything in front of Michael, but she gave him a look that said they needed to talk later. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Observing Michael love someone else didn’t spark jealousy as much as relief, Alex discovered, because Alex’s priority really was just for Michael to be happy with someone who had the capacity for loving him like he deserved. And that someone wasn’t him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex left before he and Maria could talk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His A.I. couldn’t handle his best friend discovering he was an android, not today. He was already so worn out, Alex knew she’d be able to talk him into staying, for sure, and then his father would know right where to find them </span>
  <em>
    <span>both</span>
  </em>
  <span>, like a bloodhound leading the hunter to prey. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Come to think of it, Maria smelled a bit like an alien, too…</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael caught him leaving. Made him coffee, even. It felt like apology coffee, anticipating something to apologize for. Michael </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>good at reading people, but, like, normal people. Not anti-alien killer androids, apparently. They talked past each other without Maria there to focus them, and Alex could speak light of the most real thing that had ever happened to him (“That’s hell?”), and could tell Michael to forget about him and make Michael agree (“I used to really think you and I were gonna end up together”). </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was better that Michael and Maria were happy with each other and safely unattached to him. Alex was going to have enough trouble getting rid of his father and stopping Project Shepherd without letting emotions have the upper hand. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0008"><h2>8. Chapter 8</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tag to 2x10: American Woman</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>He was right. Maria had smelled like an alien because she </span>
  <em>
    <span>was </span>
  </em>
  <span>an alien. And in Alex’s family’s ancient history, where Manes, Truman, and DeLuca intersected the first time, there was a man named Tripp who was perhaps less evil than your run-of-the-mill Manes, who had stones enough to love an alien but not enough of a spine to save her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>No, actually, that sounded very much like a run-of-the-mill Manes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was freeing to know Alex wasn’t technically related to </span>
  <em>
    <span>any</span>
  </em>
  <span> of them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Seeing Jesse helpless with a stroke, twitching and glitching like his android son, or like an alien from one of his own torture chambers, brought Alex no satisfaction. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>One, </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>wasn’t the sadist. Even his father designed him with the ability to register others’ pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Two, as long as he was alive, Jesse Manes was a threat. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So of course Alex knew he was fucking bugged. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was thanks to his mother’s A.I. program that Alex kept himself on mission. Jesse played all his cards right, all the helplessness and regret for how their relationship had turned out, he might even have believed in his own redemption as far as Alex could tell, but in lieu of being able to decipher microexpressions, Alex had his mother’s anger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sure, who wouldn’t want the man who built them to not be a murdering torturing psychopath? Who didn’t want their father’s approval, and might do anything for it? The android part of him knew emotions could make him sappy and stupid, but the android part of him also calculated the probability that a stroke </span>
  <em>
    <span>could </span>
  </em>
  <span>reformat the neurons that made up a person until you had an actual person and not a monster and came up with a nonzero answer...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But angry, paranoid, human-feeling Alex also knew better. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He checked his jacket. And pants. And cuffs of his jeans, and there, yes, there. The bug. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sighed, thought about just putting the jeans in the wash, but then Jesse might just try again, and Alex might not catch it next time. It had been stupid to hope at all, so he didn’t let himself be too disappointed. It was better if he just didn’t let himself feel anything, besides the anger. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(That was why the threesome had been so Hellish. He’d felt...loved. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Him</span>
  </em>
  <span>. All gears and rage, nothing in there to love, really. But Michael and Maria had still loved him.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Alex shut it all down. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It made it easier to lie to Guerin convincingly enough that his dad would overhear it and know instantly that any love between him and Guerin was over, and perhaps convince Jesse to trust him. It made it easier to take that spaceship part back, coming in right when Michael had been messing with the pollen to make a bracelet for Maria and felt sick and weak, it was all calculated:</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt; Have a plan so stupid as to set Michael off: “I’m gonna give it to him. I want to see what he does with it once he's got it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt; Let his father, surely listening in, know that Alex didn’t fully trust him, of course, that he was just duped enough to be realistic: “Look, if it didn't fit in your console, then it fits somewhere else. My dad could lead us there.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;&gt;That wasn’t a lie, so much. Just a bad idea.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;Back to Guerin, proprietary and controlling: “I’m asking you to trust me.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;Lie to him: “I’ve protected you so far.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;Twist the knife: “I believe there’s some good in my father.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;Accuse Michael of holding onto anger baselessly: “Your anger made you feel safe.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;&gt;Alex </span>
  <em>
    <span>knew </span>
  </em>
  <span>how important anger was.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;&gt;&gt;Was there a robot hell for him to go to? If there wasn’t already, Alex’s casual allusions to suicide as a final form of leverage to get Michael to do what he wanted probably sealed his fate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>&gt;&gt;&gt;Alex couldn’t imagine anything more Hellish than watching Michael hurt and knowing he was the one hurting him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael was too floored by all of this to protest when Alex took the console piece. So, that worked. A part of him wished Michael </span>
  <em>
    <span>would </span>
  </em>
  <span>have fought him when he goaded him, but no, of course not. Michael’s heart was already broken, and Michael only engaged in violence to hurt himself, so. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was better that Michael’s heart was broken and he was safely away from him.  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex left the bunker feeling good about that performance. Well, not </span>
  <em>
    <span>good</span>
  </em>
  <span>, obviously, but he had let go of everything but anger, right now, like some kind of anti-Jedi, anti-Vulcan. At least his dad wouldn’t be murdering Michael for his console piece any time soon, and in the meantime Alex would figure out Jesse’s plan and stop him. Permanently, if he had to. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>What Alex hadn’t calculated for was Flint being in on this whole thing—with his </span>
  <em>
    <span>own </span>
  </em>
  <span>agenda. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And—get this—</span>
  <em>
    <span>Helena Ortecho</span>
  </em>
  <span>, with her own agenda. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And a company called Genoryx, possibly but as yet unconfirmed to be unrelated to all of them, also with </span>
  <em>
    <span>its </span>
  </em>
  <span>own agenda. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex had thirty-six processing cores operating at max capacity and even he couldn’t keep up with this bullshit. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Chapter 9</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Tag to 2x12: Crash Into Me</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Flint might have got the drop on him, briefly, but Alex had this under control. Mostly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Handcuffed in the basement of Flint’s house while diabolical plans happened above him, Alex heard a lot of what was going on with his super-senses. It did not mean all of it strictly </span>
  <em>
    <span>computed</span>
  </em>
  <span>…  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He was learning, of course, while he was chained up in the basement (hardly a new experience for him, honestly, just feeding that old, broken childhood rage): about Jesse trying to frame and murder the aliens with a bomb, and Flint escalating to just murdering the aliens with another bomb, and Helena—wanting to murder Jesse with an anti-Manes-blood bomb? He didn’t exactly blame her, of course, he might even have thanked her for that, in some alternate universe version of things that made more sense. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The upshot was, there was an awful lot of murdering that was going to be going on at CrashCon, and Michael and his siblings and Maria were all in immediate danger, while the whole town was in similarly serious but less immediate danger, and his evil father and useless brothers were also potentially in danger. So Alex would bide his time and make his escape just before the Con, so as to maximize the element of surprise—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And then he smelled rain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael. These bastards had Michael. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. Chapter 10</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Alex escaped on his own, thank you very much. Sure, he had to rip his hand off and re-attach it badly, and plugged a chair leg into his knee so he could hobble around, and came up from the basement to find Michael, Helena Ortecho, and a scientist standing around talking over a canister with something green inside, looking vaguely threatening. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex!” Helena cried, horrified to see him at all, much less walking around on an improvised leg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex!” Michael cried, rushing to him. He looked completely freaked out by Alex’s leg, but not enough to not hug him. Alex squeezed him tight, and put Michael behind him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The other woman’s eyes grew huge, but she didn’t say anything—except she did look a little too closely at his wrist, where a few circuits stuck out. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Thanks for the sandwiches, Mrs. Ortecho,” Alex said, with his best polite-kid voice. “But I’m taking your hostages and your bomb.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex, be careful. I don’t think it’s quite like that,” Michael began, but Helena interrupted him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course it isn’t like that, mijo,” she said. “This isn’t what it looks like. I think you and I have a common enemy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex, the bomb is keyed to destroy </span>
  <em>
    <span>your </span>
  </em>
  <span>DNA,” Michael explained hastily. “Your dad has the alien-killing one, and she was going to switch them.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Helena shrugged. “You see, </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> wasn’t going to kill anyone. If disaster never strikes, justice will never be served. He’d only kill himself.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She held down the button on the atomizer, warning him not to come any closer. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex rolled his eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“God damn it, Helena, if you hate him that much, just shoot him,” he said, and put his hand over hers, wrestling with her until she dropped the atomizer, releasing the toxin into the room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Everyone gasped, Michael cried out, “Alex!” but nothing happened.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex was, of course, fine, having no Manes DNA—no DNA at all, really—though high on vicotry Alex may have made a tasteless crack about how Helena of all people shouldn’t be surprised that someone didn’t share DNA with their father. Helena rounded on the blonde woman to accuse her of making the bioweapon improperly, but Alex grabbed Helena and turned her back to face him “But you’re right, Helena. We do have a common enemy. And he’s holding an anti-alien bomb that’s going to kill everyone I’ve ever cared about. Where the fuck is he?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>After she told them what she knew, they locked Helena in a closet with the now-useless but incriminating bomb, and sent an anonymous tip to the Sheriff. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Chapter 11</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I can’t let you do this alone,” Michael said, pulling up a few blocks from Jesse Manes’ home, close enough to see that his car was still there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t even have your powers, and no offense, but you’re not that great in a fight.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael huffed, squeezing the steering wheel. “Sure, don’t sugar-coat it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sighed. Messing up again already. He really was engineered by a sociopath, and the only “feelings” he got were designed by a woman who left her kids with an abusive asshole.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Look. There’s still something else going on at CrashCon, Guerin. I don’t know where Flint is, and I don’t know where your console piece is.” Alex bit his lip. He glitched when he spoke, his voice sounding tinny and uncertain. “I-I’m sorry about that, by the way. About a lot of things.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex showed Michael his wrist, the obvious seam and the fiber-optic cables sticking out, in case Michael hadn’t guessed already. “We have a lot to talk about. After I stop my father and his alien-killing bomb.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Michael’s eyes were huge, like, my girlfriend-and-her-best-friend-just-invited-me-to-a-threesome kind of huge, and </span>
  <em>
    <span>why was Alex thinking about that right now? </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But Michael surprised him by smiling, almost laughing. “Guess this explains why you seem like such an asshole, sometimes.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex rolled his eyes, but he was grinning as he got out of the car. It felt like a moment where he should have kissed Michael, if Michael weren’t dating Maria, or if, yeah, if he weren’t such an asshole. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alex,” Michael said. “Let me come with you.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex slammed the door. “Don’t make me be an asshole again to you to make you leave, Guerin. He’s got a weapon that could kill you. He’s not going to hurt me. Not anymore.” </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Chapter 12</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Alex didn’t give Jesse a chance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The part of him that was human and angry wanted his father to suffer, or at least to know who had killed him, but the android part of him was more efficient and more ruthless. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Later, Alex didn’t even remember killing him. He remembered shutting all the doors and windows, deactivating the bomb, and then he was locking the door and walking away. He must have deleted the part where he actually killed his father from his memory banks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he was just as surprised to learn later that his father’s house burned down sometime that evening, with him inside. Perhaps he had fallen while using the stove and couldn’t get up, people speculated. Paramedics assured him and his brothers that the smoke killed him first, and he felt no pain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Robot hell, right? </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Chapter 13</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><span>He arrived at CrashCon in time to find Flint barely alive and Max Evans to thank for it—if Max</span> <span>survived, for that matter. </span></p><p>
  <span>Cam and Charlie dealt with Flint’s sniper, and the rest of them had already dealt with the alien bomb. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And aliens were kind of mundane at this point when Alex Manes had wires and circuits poking out of his wrist and leg. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You already knew,” Alex told Maria, in a quiet moment at the Wild Pony afterward. They were all bone-weary but too wired to sleep. Michael sat pressed against Maria, but she and Alex spoke like there was no one else in the room. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I should have known earlier,” Maria said. “I always knew something was different about you, but figured I was just...too close to you, and so my reading of your aura was off.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex wanted to cry at that, so he laughed. “You felt close to me? I’m not even a person, DeLuca.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maria’s gaze grew fierce, and she reached across the table to snatch up his hand. “That’s your father talking, Alex. Once you convince yourself someone’s not a person, it’s a slippery slope to what you justify doing to them, and who else you can convince yourself doesn’t ‘count’ as a person.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She picked at the wires protruding from his wrist until they sparked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey!” Alex flinched and pulled away. “Just because I don’t feel pain doesn’t mean—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Then Maria pinched the back of Michael’s hand. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, what did </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> do?” Michael complained, stiffening up and drawing away from her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex flinched, too: “What are you </span>
  <em>
    <span>doing</span>
  </em>
  <span>?”  </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Feeling your own pain is nothing special, you’re not missing much,” she said. “Feeling another’s pain is part of being </span>
  <em>
    <span>human</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Alex. It measures your empathy, your capacity for love.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex huffed. His father had only built him that way so that </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>would have a way to hurt him. But maybe his corrupted A.I. had taken that weakness and made it a strength? It was a lot to take in, no matter how much he truster Maria.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not capable of loving anyone,” Alex protested. He motioned at them: both of them nearly killed tonight because of something his father had built. And wasn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>also built by Jesse Manes? “I mean, obviously. Whatever you think you see in me, you’re wrong, DeLuca.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He got up, needing to clear his head. Needing to fix his leg and hand. Needing to get away from these...feelings. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll still be here when you figure it out, I guess,” Michael called to his back, tone shifted to dig, like a barb. Unusual but not unheard of for Guerin. “Like always.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>As Alex left, he thought he saw Michael put an arm around Maria, and he definitely detected the sound of Maria crying. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It hurt, and Alex was still trying to process whether that was supposed to be a good thing.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0014"><h2>14. Chapter 14</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Michael didn’t talk to him for a week, proving Maria’s point: Alex could do or say anything to Michael and be forgiven, but because he had hurt Maria’s feelings, Alex was in the doghouse with both of them. He wasn’t sure Guerin had ever been mad at him before, actually, so this was kind of novel. Alex had even tried reaching out for help building himself a new hand, but Michael had sent him to Sanders, instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After what Alex had said about Michael’s hand injury, though, maybe Alex didn’t blame him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end he came to apologize to Maria, first. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Whatever simulations he had run in his head before he bellied up to the bar to talk to her on a dead Tuesday afternoon, though, failed him when he finally got there. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” she said, bemused, but not helping him out.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hi,” he replied. “Uh, so I came to,” he tried, and then ordered a beer instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I was wondering if we could talk about,” he tried, and then they made fun of his dad’s memorial service instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry I—” he began, but there was too much to apologize for, and so much of it he didn’t understand, so he finished, “—that I’m a dumb robot.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maria actually laughed when he came out with that one, and she reached across the bar to take his hand. He had repaired the loose wires, and his wrist was seamless again, feeling and looking like human flesh. “Alex. I wasn’t looking for an apology so much as…” she shook her head. “God, you </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>a dumb robot.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She laughed again, but Alex frowned, so she quickly stopped.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s okay to ask for help, Alex,” she said. “Emotional help, too. The kind you obviously need. Seriously, finding out you’re a robot—”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Android.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Android. Sorry. It just, it made a lot of things make so much more sense.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex glowered, but played with his beer bottle while he said, “I should have told you sooner.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>She smiled at him and shrugged.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You had the right to your secret. You already came out once to me. Just like the first time, it doesn’t make me love you any less.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looked up at that, still disbelieving. “Love? Me? You’re crazy.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nah. I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>human</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And 12.5% alien.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maria smiled wryly at him. “You knew that about me, too. Before even I knew.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guessed. I can smell—” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alex sniffed the air, and froze. Speaking of aliens, there was an alien coming, and since it was probably Guerin, Alex stood up to leave. “I should—” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it was only Max Evans, here for his shift. He smiled awkwardly at Alex, an attempt at warmth. Alex nodded back, and remembered to smile, too, as Max headed into the back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You should talk to Guerin,” Maria said. For the first time she seemed uncertain. “There’s a lot of baggage between you two, and I—I want it dealt with. If you two want to try again, you should.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You don’t have to worry about that,” Alex told her firmly. “There’s no way after what I said and did that he’ll want to… Not when he has you. You guys are great together.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know we are,” Maria said. “I don’t think we’d stop being great together if you got involved, too.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Maria, I—” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Alex cut himself off as he considered that. He thought about the night they shared together, all three of them. He still thought of it as some kind of hell where his processors just didn’t...work...right. It had been too much, too dizzying, having them both there. He knew Michael loved him, against all logic. He knew Maria loved him, too. But separately, differently. Together, it didn’t add up. A problem he couldn’t solve.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The android part of him couldn’t, anyway. And he was too afraid of trying to deal with this like a human. Unless, of course—</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll think about it,” Alex promised, but he was already burying the very notion deep in his memory banks. If he could just forget how good that night made him feel, how safe, how grateful, if he could just forget knowing the fulfilment of his every aching longing to feel human, he would be fine. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If he could forget what it was like to be known </span>
  <em>
    <span>and </span>
  </em>
  <span>loved, not just known </span>
  <em>
    <span>or </span>
  </em>
  <span>loved, he could solve the problem, compartmentalize it, and move on. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He went home already humming a tune, his processors translating the feelings into a math program—into musical notes, into something he could solve. Only then did the words flow. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0015"><h2>15. Chapter 15</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Would you meet me in the middle?<br/>
Could we both stop keeping score?<br/>
There's a battle I must fight alone<br/>
It's you I'm fighting for.”</p><p>He had to have some serious brass balls to sing the song in front of all of them, in the end, with Maria cleaning glasses behind the bar, with Michael just walking in with his sister, and Forrest Long sitting right there. Of course, his balls were <em> not </em>brass but made of synthetic bioplastic like the rest of him, but it was a funny comparison in his head.</p><p>Forrest was beaming at him, just leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest in his infuriatingly attractive sweater. Alex wished that made him feel something. </p><p>Maria wasn’t watching him, but he could tell she was listening, because she had been pouring that beer for a long time and the percentage of foam wasn’t <em> that </em>high. That made him feel something. Guilt, maybe, that his song wasn’t about her, more. The person in the world who probably knew him the best. </p><p>Michael, on the other hand, looked ready to bolt, but Isobel made him sit down and ordered him a beer. Michael was watching his performance, but avoiding his eyes. Alex could tell, because they were what he was looking for.</p><p>“If I call off the battalion<br/>
Break my walls down stone by stone<br/>
Tear down my defenses<br/>
I can build your heart a home.<br/>
And if I did<br/>
Would you come home?”</p><p>He caught Michael’s eyes, finally, at the end of the chorus, and held them until the end, filtering out all other stimuli, all other distractions. This was their moment, or should be. Was there something slightly off about it? His analysis of Michael revealed that he might be vaguely pained, that he still wanted to leave. </p><p>He...never let Michael do what he wanted, did he? </p><p>The song ended to applause, and he received a hearty congratulations from Forrest as he stepped away from the keyboard. If Michael and Maria hadn’t been there, Alex could have kissed him, just for being the only one who made sense. </p><p>But he didn’t. Instead he accepted Forrest’s handshake and then sat alone in the back like the emo kid he still was, apparently, and listened to a girl and an acoustic guitar and another girl doing slam poetry, and all the open mic staples. </p><p>Isobel left eventually, and Michael moved to the bar to sit near Maria. Michael kept looking at him and then away, and finally Maria motioned Alex over to join them, but Alex waited until the bar was almost empty before doing so. </p><p>Michael was fixing a barstool, now that the evening had died down, and seemed surprised by his arrival. He looked between the chair legs and Alex’s leg and even grinned vaguely, and Alex rolled his eyes, and the tension between them was broken without a word. Which just went to show how good they were at communicating when they didn’t communicate. </p><p>“Thanks for staying for the song,” Alex managed, finally, when the bar was finally closed. “I...wanted you to hear it.” </p><p>“In front of my girlfriend? ...Who is the reason I stayed around for it?” Michael asked, but there was no malice in his voice. If anything, Alex thought he might have sounded sad. </p><p>Maria set a tub full of dirty glasses on the bar next to them. </p><p>“I wanted Maria to hear it, too,” Alex said, in his defense, turning to face her. They were on either side of him now, so he had to look back and forth between them. “It’s not a proper apology, but it’s maybe...an explanation.” He huffed, laughing at himself. “I can only do feelings when they’re set to music.”</p><p>“Yeah.” Michael huffed, too, agreeing with him, and Michael reached out with a fingertip, brushing their knuckles together, drawn to him. They both knew it. Maria knew it, too. “Maybe you should start singing, now.” </p><p>It might have been a metaphor, Michael often spoke in metaphors, but Alex was unsteady, unable to parse it. And he was so desperate to make this work, to have them both back, in whatever capacity, because his existence was just ones and zeroes without them. </p><p>“I just wrote that song for you!” Alex protested. “You want me to sing it again?” </p><p>Michael looked behind him, and Alex turned to Maria, who was shaking her head, sliding up to sit on a barstool and reaching across to take his hand. “Alex. I don’t think you wrote that song to Michael or me. You wrote that song to <em> you </em>.”</p><p>Alex looked away, back at his beer.</p><p>“‘Meet me in the middle’? ‘You are the best of me’? Alex, it’s a love letter to yourself,” Maria continued. “It’s a good thing. It’s because you don’t love <em>you</em> that you won’t let yourself love anyone else.” </p><p>Michael was smiling, and shrugged in agreement. “Like, to the part of you that’s machine. From the part of you that’s got a heart.” </p><p>“My dad didn’t build me with a heart,” Alex protested, though he was already cycling back through the lyrics he had written, applying them to himself, and suspecting she was right. God, she was always right, that wasn’t fair, was it?  </p><p>“No, but he didn’t build you gay, either,” Michael pointed out, leaning one elbow on the bar. “Learning what we did about Noah, about Max’s heart—I’m not sure <em> I’m </em>any more born than built.”</p><p>“So stop using that as an excuse,” Maria said. </p><p>“Or ask for help,” Michael suggested.</p><p>Alex swallowed, then shored himself up and turned to Michael. “I was bugged, when I visited you in your bunker. My father was listening in, and I wanted him to think—well, a lot of things, but I wanted him to stay away from you, so that’s why I said what I said, and did what I did.”</p><p>Michael didn’t say anything, but everything was in his eyes as he waited for more. He was angry, but also relieved. </p><p>“And I’m sorry,” Alex said. “I didn’t mean it, though. I’m sorry I—deceived you.” </p><p>Michael nodded, and there was that pull again, like gravity, Alex’s program’s alien obsession, and Michael drawn in by any interest in him. They might almost have kissed, but Alex turned again. </p><p>“Maria. I…” </p><p>This was harder. Maria wasn’t hurt so much as disappointed, and she had a right to be.  </p><p>“I should have trusted you more, earlier, and always. The truth is, the Air Force didn’t change me. Finding out I wasn’t real—was an android—that did. It scared me to learn that. And I was scared to let anyone else find out. Not that I thought anyone would hate me or want me dead—not like—you—”</p><p>Alex motioned to Michael, but, hell, Maria, Mimi, the Ortechos, Max and Isobel, all of them knew the fear of xenophobia better than he did. Anyone who wanted to kill him because he was an abomination would be doing him a favor, honestly. What he was scared of was much softer:</p><p>“I was afraid that the one person who knew me best and loved me the most would stop loving me,” Alex said, and was surprised to find out that there were tears in his eyes. He honestly hadn’t been aware until this moment that he could cry. “And when you proved me wrong and kept loving me, I didn’t—know what to do with that.” </p><p>Maria smiled sagely, the kind of smile she got when she was about to make a terrible pun or something. “It didn’t compute.” </p><p>Alex snorted, and Michael laughed. </p><p>“Yeah,” Alex said, wiping his nose and eyes. “So, I’m sorry I didn’t trust you more, and earlier. I—I love you.” </p><p>He cleared his throat before things could get any more mushy. “So that’s why I don’t want to get in the way of this thing you have…” </p><p>“Here we go again,” Michael groaned, going back to the chair he was fixing. </p><p>“Alex,” Maria said firmly, turning him to face her. “Let me put this in simple, logical terms so you understand. What do you get when you connect three dots?”</p><p>“A...triangle?” Alex said, and then blushed as associated words came to mind: threesome, triad, menage a trois. So geometry was vaguely racy now? He laughed at himself, at what he had become, at the logic tree his artificial intelligence had gone down. “Oh, God.” </p><p>“We both love Guerin, he loves both of us, and we love each other,” Maria said. </p><p>And it <em> was </em>clear, it was crystal clear. The code ran smoothly, without a glitch, once he let it. A subroutine for mapping out sex was the only element of complexity, just enough to make the program elegant, really. </p><p>He kissed Maria first, but he kissed Michael for longer.</p><p>The music added up.</p>
  </div></div>
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